Coryoon: Child of Dragon

Just as with the other entries, many are the games I could
have chosen to start with this underrated system, but this time
I ended looking for a game from the most popular genre
on the console made by NEC and Hudson.

Shoot'em Ups, being the biggest genre in its library,
hold a huge amount of titles that you can enjoy if
you're into this game style, with many of those being great.

Looking around, there was one that strongly called my attention.
It's colorful, it's charming, it's fun, and it has quite a few features.
It also happens to be one of my favourites in this system.

It's Coryoon: Child of Dragon!

Created by Naxat Soft and published by NEC in 1991, Coryoon: Child of Dragon is a Shoot'em Up, or rather, Cute'm Up; that sadly never got to be released outside Japan, even when it's almost one hundred percent in English... They didn't even need to do much in the way of localization!

Naxat Soft was a small studio formed inside a company named Kaga Create, and they developed and published games for a variety of systems like NES, SNES, PC-E or PS1. Some of those games, for example, are the series of pinball games under the "Crush" name (like Alien Crush, or Demon Crush, for example); or Holy Umbrella for the Super Famicom. 

Now, onto the game. The story is extremely simple, just to get things moving.

You're Coryoon, a small dragon that has a great friendship with a princess, and you're having a fun day, when...

The villain of the week appears for no adequately explored reason and chibifies your friend! What a Monster!

Now she'll have to live the rest of her life in fear of severe neck and back problems trying to hold that massive head
while also being exiled to live in terribly written slice of life Anime where nothing really happens!

Okay, okay, that's not what really happens. Technically he's supposed to be an Evil Wizard, and he transforms the princess back into being a kid. For what reasons, you ask? I have no idea. As far as I know the game does not explain it. Maybe the villain is just a douche bag. I mean, bad guys can just be bad guys, not every villain needs to have motives, some just can be despicable people, that's why are, well, bad guys, after all.

In any case, Coryoon, surprised by the events and not happy at all about the situation, quickly starts to chase that douchey wizard, who starts sending his minions to stop him.

This is what usually is named as Excuse Plot, a very simplistic story with the intention to give you a reason to play, or an excuse to have a situation which you can do what the game demands. 

Super Mario Bros. had the classic of "Save the Princess" to let you jump and mess around on the Mushroom Kingdom, Sonic The Hedgehog had the idea of saving animals from the clutches of Dr. Robotnik to let you run and roll through crazy areas, and Mega Man had for mission to bring the crazy and dangerous Dr. Wily to justice so you could journey across thematic stages.

But going back to Coryooon...

The storks should be your biggest focus, as they carry all sorts of Power-Ups!

The structure of the game is very typical of the genre, even more at that time, with a series of levels that you play in a lineal order with each new one increasing the challenge and adding new obstacles. Beyond that, as you can see, Coryoon is part of the Horizontal Shoot'em Up "sub-genre", in which the action is seen from the side.

Now, one of the most important aspects of a "Shmup" is the control of, what most of the time is, a spaceship of some kind. In this game obviously you're not using a vehicle, but well, in the end is pretty much the same mechanically, although I enjoy controlling creatures or characters more than I do moving around ships. In any case, Coryoon is a pretty good guy to move around.

He can shoot small fireballs if you hold the Attack Button (something called "Rapid Fire"), and it's the most basic form of attack at your disposal. It can be useful for going through levels, but it falls slightly short for bosses.

If you stop shooting, Coryoon will automatically start charging a much more dangerous flame attack that can pierce through enemies, damaging anything in a straight line. This technique can be really useful in several situations, and against bosses can be a good way to do some damage without having to be in front of them constantly (shoot your flame and move out of the way!). That said, the few seconds it takes to charge can leave you exposed to enemy attacks, so you need to know when to use it!

Another little mechanic that is always welcomed whenever is present in a Shmup is the Speed Toggle option. While some games have Power-Ups to make you faster, other games have this instead.  Pushing Select will swap Coryoon's speed through two different levels. Knowing when to take advantage of each setting can be quite important, as sometimes being too fast can be dangerous (crashing yourself into obstacles), and in other situations, being slow won't let you avoid attacks in time (like with some bosses).

All in all, Coryoon is quite fun to control, and both speed settings can be equally useful.

If you think those are a lot of fruits, you haven't seen anything yet!

But most of the time you'll spend playing Coryoon, it will be using the Elemental Power-Ups to obliterate anything that's silly enough to try take you!

These improvements take the form of colored orbs and are usually brought by Storks (that I don't know if they're friends or foes, to be honest, some are bad at the very least). Shooting the Storks will make them run away and leave the Power-Up floating around.

There are three types:

• Fire: Coryoon will turn red, and his normal breath will become a continuous stream of fire with medium to small range, but very high power. Can be incredibly useful, as it can heavily damage things in little time, making it the most seeked Power-Up for bosses, although because of the range it can be a bit risky.

• Water: Coryoon will turn blue, and his breath will become a wide wave of water that can go through foes. At its best, the liquid projectiles are huge and can take a considerable chunk of the screen, making this Power-Up great for normal levels, cleaning the screen rather well.

• Thunder: Coryoon will turn yellow, and his breath will become electric projectiles that will go flying in different directions. Kinda similar to the Spread Gun in Contra, with the difference that when it is at its best you can shoot both in front of you and behind you. While it is the least powerful, it can protect you rather well because you're causing constant damage around you. Great to attack enemies behind you.

You silly hands, you can't grab water like that!

Each of these Elemental Power-Ups has three levels, that you can achieve by getting more orbs of the same colors. Fortunately it's simpler than you may imagine, as orbs change color each few seconds, until they disappear from the screen.

Something I really like is that if you, say, have level three Fire, and grab an orb of other color, you'll maintain that level three with the new Power-Up, so if you're skillful enough, you can jump from the different elements being fully powered up. Another use these Power-Ups have is that they let you get an extra hit. If you're hurt while having these, you'll turn back to normal (and if you're hit again, you would lose a Life). This can be a life saver.

Kinda disappointing that my Electric attacks are not Super Effective against these Water creatures.

Besides the elemental upgrades, there's also an array of other items you can grab and give you other abilities! These are:

• Heart: Two fairies will start to circle around Coryoon, protecting him from proyectiles (if they make contact), and if you're close to an enemy, they will hurt it too. Pushing the Secondary Button, the fairies will position themselves in a different way.

• Diamond: Coryoon will become tiny, and it will be much easier to avoid enemies or enemy projectiles, very similar to what we can see in Gradius. Taking a hit while being Mini will turn you normal again.

• Spade: Works like your typical Screen-Clearing Super Bomb. Just press the Secondary Button after grabbing it and everything on screen will go Boom!

• Clover: Kinda similar to the Thunder Shield from Sonic The Hedgehog 3, it will attract the fruit towards you, instead of dropping off the screen when you push the Secondary Button.

• Dragon: A small dragon helper will appear and will help you trhough the stage, before it retreats when you reach the boss. These can also have different colors and abilities!

You can get these Power-Ups from what I would scientifically call Giant Enemy Chickens.

Ah, gigantic score items, so teasing, so dangerous...

Beyond all that, you'd probably notice another one: Fruit. Fruit everywhere, in fact. Every enemy will drop fruits of all types, with the bigger baddies dropping giant fruits that give many more points.

Unlike many other games, where scoring doesn't really matter much, here you do want high scoring, as the Extra Lives you can get through racking up score is a phenomenal gift, and in fact, "High scoring" in Coryoon is one of the more fun aspects of the game.

You see, the amount of fruit flying on the screen at all times can be ridiculous, and I mean waterfalls of fruit appearing on screen. In fact it can be even challenging to not distract you with all the delicious fruit as you mow down baddies without being hit or surprised by an enemy. Even more, maintaining yourself alive as you fight while also trying to catch as much fruit as you can can be quite tense, but it's quite worth it for all those Extra Lives.

The difficulty of the game is rather medium for the genre (it has always been a genre known for its challenging difficulty), and sometimes can get a bit more tense, but if you keep getting as much fruit and defeating as many enemies as you can, you'll always have a nice amount of Lives to get you through those challenging moments.

You can increase the difficulty if you desire to do so, but honestly, I think the default difficulty is rather inclusive for most people, as the game seeks you to have a good time, which does quite well.

I'm sorry, but that attempt of a scary face does not work. Those cutesy wings don't help, either.

Now, one of the biggest reasons for which you surely lose some lives here and there are Bosses. In this game, there are two for stage, one in the middle, and another one in the end. In general, bosses are big, colorful and a good chunk of them have several phases and can offer you a moderate challenge.

Some of them have minions helping, while others can throw you a large amount of projectiles at you, so you better keep moving at all times.  A few of them can take quite the beating before they retreat in defeat, increasing the chances of you losing lives. Thankfully, after you take down one of these big baddies, you'll be rewarded big chunks of Score that does wonders to recover lost lives.

Oh, C'mon, throw me those floating islands from the background if you will, too!

The game has 7 Stages, each one taking place on a different environment, with its own enemies, bosses and music, alongside a final area with your typical Boss Rush; so there is quite enough variety present in this little game. Even more, each Stage has a pretty decent level of Parallax Scrolling and different sections too.

Visually speaking, Coryoon is one of the better looking games of the PC-Engine, not counting the CD peripheral (but hell, it probably looks better than a good chunk of those too). Everything looks great; with characters and objects having cartoony and charming designs, Coryoon being cute as hell, and most enemies looking fun. The game is colorful, fast and doesn't have signs of slowdown, and almost no clipping at all, which is all the more interesting to note seeing the great amount of objects moving on screen at the same time. That's quite laudable if you ask me, as the PC-Engine was a weaker system compared to the SNES and SMD, yet here it is, doing it quite well.

There's a bunch of nice pictures in the different options of the game. I really like them!
Also, obligatory onigiri.

Sound wise, it also does pretty good. It sports nice sound effects that fit well with the action on the screen, and there's even little digitized voices for when you get Power-Ups in a similar fashion to Parodius. They're even as "engrishy" as those in Parodius!

You'll hear things like "Faiah! Watah! Thandah! Congraturation!" as you play whenever you get either Power-Ups or Extra Lives. I've always loved to find these in old games, and Coryoon's put a smile in my face. It's just cheesy and great.

Now, about the music, it's also pretty neat. From the moment you turn the game on, and hear the energetic Title Screen theme, you'll see that Coryoon sports a cool little soundtrack, with some being playful, fast-paced and catchy themes, while others being more slightly more somber and tense. It even has little themes for the different options in the game!

Composed by Hisashi Mitsuhita and Daisuke Morishima, I think it is pretty a nice little package.

You can take listen to the soundtrack by clicking on DK here!

Those crabs aren't big enough to make references!

But that's not all! Coryoon, as I said in the beginning, is rather feature-rich for a Shoot'em Up!

For starters, there are three difficulty settings, as the image above shows. While I find Easy to be... Well, too simple for my taste, Hard spices the game quite nicely, which is always a plus. While the ending does no vary between difficulties, funny enough the music theme that plays during the ending changes between them.

Beyond that, Coryoon also offers two different Time Trial modes, for two and five minutes. The goal is to get the highest score you can before the time is up. Interestingly enough, everything in this mode is unique to Time Trial, with stages, enemies and obstacles not seen in the Main Game, which I find great.

And if you ask yourself what good is to play for score, well, you would be right, as most of the time these games did not save data. Thing is, Coryoon does!

The game saves your best score for the Main Mode, Two Minutes Time Trial and Five Minutes Time Trial separately, and not only that, as it also saves your progress in the Main Game. As you successfully beat Stages, you will unlock them in the Select Stage.

When I first played this I had no idea it saved data, and was quite surprised finding out!

Another usual feature in old games is the ability to listen to the game's soundtrack and sound effects in a Sound Test option. Coryoon thankfully does too.

Yet one more cool thing: This menu also acts as a Secret Menu! If you play certain songs in a certain order, you can activate cheats or special options, like more lives, invencibility, a Fruit-less Mode (making the game harder) and a few more. I had no idea this existed until after having beat the game several times!

Seriously, this game makes me smile with its little things.

...And that's more or less Coryoon: Child of Dragon. It's a fun, charming and meaty package, and in my personal opinion a great way to start talking about the PC-Engine / Turbo-Grafx 16. It has a sort of "brother" in another PC-E game named Air Zonk, made by the same people.

Anyway, I recommend this game if it looks even mildly interesting to you. In fact, I challenge you to beat my most recent High Score in the screenshot below! It shouldn't be terribly difficult, either!

And now, that's truly all I have to say. Enjoy Coryoon. Cheers!